My Father, the Panda Killer, page 27
As Phúc set off, the man followed, and soon there was a train of American soldiers doing squats in a circle around the ship. At first, the other Vietnamese refugees on the boat found this hilarious, like some kind of absurd clown show led by a cat. Phúc just looked so small compared to the American men. But then, slowly, they, too, began to join. Their legs and joints had begun to hurt, so who cared if they looked stupid in the middle of the ocean? Their bodies needed the movement, and the silliness of it all brought them to a place of joy they hadn’t felt in years.
This was a turning point in Phúc’s refugee journey, a moment of cautious optimism and hope for better things to come—in America. For the first time since leaving Vietnam, Phúc began to think about the future, one that didn’t involve him dying or starving or living in immense physical pain. When all was said and done, he might actually get to live the American dream. If he worked hard, he might be able to buy his own car and have a house with a wife and kids. He might be happy.
So when he stumbled upon Ngọc Lan in the middle of yet another one of her self-pitying monologues, he nearly walked away. She was holding court with her circle of girlfriends, her legs bent up to her chest and her chin resting on the tops of her knees. But then he heard his name. That was her first mistake.
“And I didn’t even have a journey as rough as Phúc’s, poor guy. My heart hurts for him, for the loss he endured, and all those people who died…”
Approaching her quickly, Phúc grabbed her wrist and yanked her toward him. “Let’s go.” Then, when they were far enough away that he thought no one could hear, he chastised her. “Why do you talk about me? Why do you talk about any of this stuff like you know?”
“Anh ơi, let go of my hand,” Ngọc Lan begged, her eyes welling with tears. Caught so off guard by his reaction, she apologized. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Anh-a.” And that was her second mistake.
He grabbed her by the shoulder and, using his right hand, slapped her face so hard it sounded like a firecracker. The manic gesture surprised him, not because he felt remorse but because he didn’t. Hitting her lit his hand on fire, and he craved the heat, not because he hated Ngọc Lan, but because he knew he deserved to burn.
I need to wait for the spray of the shower to turn on. Seconds crawl by like minutes. Standing in the doorway to our bedroom, I can see my dad lying, open-mouthed and twitchy, on his bed. Across his torso, the five shallow scars rise and expand with every breath. He’s snoring lightly, but there’s also something else. His throat ekes out a few murmurs, like he’s yelling at someone in his sleep but can’t find his voice, and right when he seems on the verge of finding it, his eyes pop open. I jump back into my room and wait.
The pipes hiss to life; it’s 5:09 a.m. The shower door rumbles as it bounces rather than rolls shut. I have three minutes—maybe less.
Inside my dad’s bedroom, I’m nervous. I’ve never snooped around my parents’ things before. Was he drafted but fled because he was too much of a coward to join the military? Does he despise the Americans for losing the war? Or for not helping enough? But then why, after someone steals from us, does he sometimes say, “Americans gave to us when we came here. We have to give back”?
My fingers tremble as I peel open the tin. Our new passports have replaced the gold bars, the pink slip is a vehicle registration, and then I find it—my dad’s refugee card. About the size of an index card and just as thick, it reads:
There’s one for my mom too. And there’s a photo of the two of them, both dressed in bell-bottom pants, my dad standing on a large rock, my mom sitting on one below, the ocean in the background. They look like a couple—it’s not romantic, and I wouldn’t say they look necessarily happy. They’re just…together.
The shower shuts off. I quickly return everything to the box and bolt from his room into mine.
I slap my face a few times before exiting to make my cheeks red and then enter the kitchen. I sit, anxiously waiting for Dad to make his morning coffee.
“I’m not feeling too good,” I say when he appears.
He doesn’t even look at me. “Take Tylenol. I need you to watch the store.”
Damn it. I slapped myself for no reason. Unless I’m on my deathbed, there is no way I’ll ever get out of watching the store.
I wake Paul, get him dressed, make our lunches, and pop two Tylenols even though I feel fine.
At the store, my dad immediately walks the perimeter, picking up trash with one hand while he smokes with the other. I begin my morning routine of checking the shelves to see what needs restocking. Everything looks good until I notice that the cans and bottles inside the refrigerators are sweating. I open the door, and my fears are confirmed. The cooler is broken. I take a deep breath and go find my dad.
“The cooler is broken,” I say.
“What?”
“The cooler for the drinks. It turned off or something. Everything is warm.”
“Siet,” he says—that’s shit with a Vietnamese accent. Every time my dad curses, which isn’t often, I have to resist the urge to laugh. It’s hardly threatening when it’s butchered so bad, but I know better than to react at all. He stubs his cigarette in the yellow parking pole and follows me back inside.
First, he opens the door to make sure I’m not a moron, and when he confirms that it’s broken, he gets his tools and goes to work.
“Go buy a bag of ice and put some drinks in a bucket for the customers,” he says. “Nhanh lên,” he adds as if I might stop and get my nails done on the two-block walk to the store.
I can’t get the image of my parents out of my head. My mom must have been just a year or two older than me, maybe my same age. I used to think I looked more like my dad, but now I can see where I have my mom’s round eyes, flat nose, and plump cheeks. Despite my desire to cut ties with all things Vietnamese, I’ve always been somewhat curious about what being a refugee means. Especially after my tenth-grade American history teacher, Mrs. Dannenberg, mentioned I was the daughter of the refugees we were studying. I remember the class looking at me in awe like I had made the perilous journey myself despite being born in San Jose, California, and growing up alongside them in school.
Guilt. I left class that day feeling guilty for not knowing my own history. But when I got home and found myself hovering near my dad, who was fixing the coffee machine, I told myself it didn’t matter. That whatever they went through in the past shouldn’t have affected how they treated me. We weren’t that kind of family. We didn’t talk about trauma, we didn’t admit to fear, and we never said “I love you.” I lived by these unspoken rules my entire life, and I’d been too afraid to break them. I might have even told myself they deserved whatever happened to them because Vietnamese people were assholes.
Vietnam was unexpected in a lot of ways, but now I see that I was wrong about so many assumptions. Having seen the shack-like buildings, I see where my dad gets his “scrappy” mentality. Vietnamese people are nothing if not practical, so I imagine that after it rains, they find something flat and sturdy, create four posts, and bam! They have shelter. And maybe the next time it rains, they notice a leak, so a tarp goes over the top. When confronted with a problem, they don’t look to anyone else; they just fix it. Now I know why my dad keeps fixing the fridges when they break; in his mind, there is no other option.
I’m so lost in my own thoughts that I barely remember putting the two hefty ice bags in my cart or paying for them. My pondering stops when I turn the corner and spot a crowd around our store. I speed walk that last block, the bags dripping with every step. Squeezing past people, I duck under the yellow tape strung between the light poles and go inside. I technically crossed under their boundary but only to cut around the people blocking our entrance.
“Stay inside,” an older officer warns me. He’s been around as long as we have. I don’t know his name, but he’s always so warm and friendly that I’ve imagined living another life where he’s my dad.
“Yes, sir.”
With the entrance blocked by gawkers, the store is empty except for the officers. When I finally spot my dad, it dawns on me. I didn’t even consider that he might have been hurt. That the reason the cops had surrounded our store could’ve been because he was bleeding to death on the floor after being robbed and shot.
“Stay inside,” my dad instructs as he follows the officers to the crime scene.
“Okay.”
I think in order to work here and not be afraid, we convince ourselves that it’s a completely safe space. That if we’re inside, minding our own business, no one wants to kill us. People might steal from us, vandalize the place, or throw a punch or two; but kill us? No way.
A tall—like, absurdly tall—officer walks in wearing a vest that makes him look more like a giant robot than a person. “You guys notice anything strange when you opened up this morning?”
“No, but my dad sent me to go get ice as soon as we arrived. Our fridge is broken again.”
“Anyone loitering or anything around the property?”
“Not that I know of.”
Another officer walks in and nods at me. “Your dad says you can show us where the cameras are?”
I walk them to the office, where we keep the video camera system. Behind me, the two of them tower over me. “It just downloads to this box that saves it for seven days and then deletes it.”
“Can you make us a copy of it?” the first one asks.
“Uh, I don’t know how to get it off the box.” My dad hates it when the cops ask us to do their job for them. We used to show them videos all the time when we would get broken into, but the justice system is shit, and we’ve never gotten anything returned. After a while, we stopped trying.
The second cop steps in front of the computer and moves the mouse around, scrolling through the feed. “Okay. We’ll send a technician over here to copy it then.” He hands me his card, which reads Lieutenant Geoff Trowe. They leave, and my dad comes back inside.
“What’s going on? Why are there so many cops here?” I ask.
“Someone got killed.”
“Who?” People die in our neighborhood all the time, but it’s still shocking to hear. And it’s not often that it’s on our property. I wonder if it’s someone I’ve seen before.
“I told her last time she got beat up. But she didn’t listen. This is what happen.”
“She was a customer?”
“That’s why I tell you to stay away from those people. You want friends like that girl? No. Friends will kill you.”
I don’t say anything. Strange as it may seem, my dad is not actually yelling at me. I mean, he is yelling at me, but it’s more out of frustration at the world.
“You think I’m strict, but I’m not. I’m easy. You want to be like these girls. Go ahead, see how you do.”
I like these conversations. They’re the closest thing he and I ever have to a heart-to-heart. He rants, and I listen. And this time, I really listen because now I know that my dad has seen some things, things that can really change a person; it makes me consider that maybe he’s not yelling at me for no reason but rather because he worries about me, like the time he followed me to school.
Alone in the store, we scrub through the footage of the murder ourselves. It’s the kind of thing you expect to see on TV, and we don’t see her getting stabbed or dying because the dumpster blocks the angle, but we don’t need to see it to know how it happened. A part of me wants to go outside, to sit with her. When I first sat down at the computer, I only saw the live video feed, where plain-clothed cops carefully took pictures and stepped around the white sheet covering her body. Watching the crime happen in real time is surreal. Even though I know she’s gone, there’s a part of me that thinks we can still save her. It seems really unfair that she should die like that and then have to lie in the same uncomfortable position all alone in the cold while strangers move around her looking for evidence. Is it too much to ask for a blanket? Not just some sterile sheet to cover her, but something warm. Something human.
My dad is silent as he watches the playback, and I wonder what he’s thinking about. If he’s remembering things he saw during the war. “Is this what it looked like when people died in the war?”
He shakes his head and looks at me like I asked if the moon was blue. “This is nothing. During the war, it was really bad. Just imagine one body here and one over there and ten, twenty more…everywhere. And those people weren’t soldiers. They were just regular people.” He shakes his head again in a gesture of pity. But it’s not pity; it’s weariness. “That’s why Viẹt Năm has a lot of ghosts.” He laughs and walks away.
“Ngủ dậy.”
Nudge.
“Ngủ dậy!”
Shove.
Open. Close. Open. Phúc blinked in reverse as beams of yellow against a bright orange sun pierced his eyes. Cast in shadow above him was the old cook, her face freshly melted from the pot of boiling rice that the Thai pirate had drowned her in. Close. His throat was dry, his mouth chapped and cracking on the edges. His body ached with the limp fatigue of a fever. His eyelids, weak and crusty, were so tightly sealed they might as well have been suction-cupped together. Even with full concentration, he couldn’t pull them apart. Using his hand, which hung heavy with the phantom weight of a brick attached, he pressed down on the skin above his eye and pushed upward. Pop. With his eyes now open, Phúc’s leg kicked the air, and he jerked awake. The sky, now a star-filled black, was static—indifferent to the rapid beating of his heart.
For just one night, Phúc wished the ghosts would leave him alone.
He wasn’t drifting alone at sea any longer; he needed to remind himself of that often. But the safety of the cargo ship did nothing to counter the visitors frequenting his imagination. These memories were the kind that rested somewhere deep in one’s mind and sprang to life at the slightest provocation. But never were they more vivid or long-lasting than when he was on this cargo ship.
* * *
At breakfast, the Americans and the Vietnamese refugees became more familiar. There were language barriers to overcome, but they were all bound for America, so they figured they might as well try to get to know one another. At Phúc’s table were Ngọc Lan, her friend Bích, Bích’s adopted sister Thảo, and a handsome American soldier, Colin. Colin was eighteen years old and new to the US Navy; Phúc could tell this by the way he was constantly being yelled at while standing at attention. This morning was no different.
Sergeant Red, a tall, redheaded man with a beak-like nose and pointed chin, walked up beside Colin, who immediately stood at attention. “Sir, yes, sir,” Colin said, and saluted.
“Sit up straight, Boot. Sailors do not slouch!”
Colin, whose posture was already stiff, adjusted only slightly and replied, “Yes, Sergeant,” and the man walked away, a smirk on the edges of his lips. It wasn’t just Sergeant Red who did this either; any officer who walked by might come upon Colin and insult whatever he was doing.
Colin didn’t seem to mind getting yelled at, though. Sergeant Red could have been reciting a prayer at him for all that Colin reacted to his shouting, and the girls giggled with delight every time.
None of them had ever seen a man shake off humiliation with such ease.
Across the room, a group of sailors began a game of snake jump rope. A crowd formed as a long rope slithered along the floor. The first jumper double-hopped to maintain her balance as the boat rocked. She was short for an American, with thick thighs and huge, muscular calves. But her most defining feature was her focus. In full concentration, she lifted her feet and followed pace with the rope. A man joined, also focused on the rhythmic wriggle of the snake. The two men controlling the rope sped up or slowed down to add difficulty, but the two jumpers kept going until the woman jumped out. The sailors encouraged refugees to give it a try. A couple of Vietnamese teens around Phúc’s age jumped in but quickly stepped on the rope when the boat lurched or the pace changed. Then Ngọc Lan got up—this was a bold and unprecedented move for a Vietnamese girl.
She watched for a long moment, her gaze concentrated on the placement of the other jumpers’ feet. Something about the way she approached the game shifted the atmosphere in the room, and the crowd leaned in closer, supporting her attempt.
Nodding, she jumped.
One foot, the other foot. Up. Up. Up.
To everyone’s surprise, including her own, she seemed able to keep up. With every second that she didn’t trip, the crowd grew quietly intense. But months of inactivity made Ngọc Lan’s legs weak. They were thin and bony, and after a minute, they began to wobble. Still, she pushed herself, making it through a few more leaps before the rope caught her ankle, and everything stopped.
The group exhaled a collective, disappointed sigh.
But Ngọc Lan wasn’t sad; she was euphoric even as she panted. An older woman, thin with charred black teeth, a potbelly, and cracked feet, nudged Ngọc Lan and handed her a wad of elastic fabric. Again, Ngọc Lan laughed. The woman wanted her to show the Americans how Vietnamese people jumped rope.
Releasing the band, Ngọc Lan called her friends over, and each took a side. Then it was the Americans’ turn to watch as the girls demonstrated Chinese Jump Rope. The game, which focused on balance, was made more difficult by the unpredictable bobbing of the ship. For the girls, though, this only added to the fun. Starting with the band around their ankles, the two girls stood opposite each other and created two parallel lines with the rope. Then Ngọc Lan demonstrated the skill. The main objective of the game was to make it through the routine without messing up.
Then it was the Americans’ turn.
“Jump into the gap. Both feet to the sides. Both feet in. Jump out to the side. That seems easy enough,” Colin said, stepping up to the plate.
